Physical Sciences Staff Awards & Honors

Layla Mehdi Honored by MRS for Her Postdoctoral Work

Congratulations to Dr. B. Layla Mehdi at Pacific Northwest
National Laboratory for receiving a 2015 Materials Research
Society Postdoctoral Award. The award honors four postdoctoral scholars each
year for their exceptional work. Mehdi was chosen for her research into the
protective and eventually smothering layer, known as the solid-electrolyte
interphase (SEI) layer, that forms around a lithium-ion battery's electrode. Using
in situ transmission electron
microscopy, she watched the layer form as the battery's liquid swirled around
and the battery charged and discharged. "It's like putting a camera inside
a battery and watching what happens, as opposed to working on a battery post
mortem," Mehdi said.

She used other tools to determine the composition of the
layer and the thorns, called dendrites, that also form and degrade battery
performance. This work was done through the Joint
Center for Energy Storage Research, funded by Basic Energy Sciences at DOE's Office of Science. In addition to
providing answers leading to safer, longer-lasting batteries, this transmission
electron microscopy imaging approach could also shed new light on corrosion and
certain biological processes.

Mehdi will receive the award at the 2015 MRS Fall Meeting in
Boston. While she'll accept the award alone, she knows that it takes a village
to make a discovery. "This was truly a collaborative effort," said
Mehdi. "I'm delighted to have been part of this project and I'm excited
about our future projects."

The microscope is one of the resources available at EMSL, Environmental Molecular Sciences
Laboratory, a DOE Office of Science scientific user facility.